Can you Freeze Pasta?
The answer is yes, yes, yes! With cooked pasta in the freezer and a handy sauce, you can have a pasta dinner on the table in minutes! This technique works well for all kinds of pasta, including whole grain and legume-based. Note that it works best when you freeze pasta in individual portions.
Freezing the pasta. All you have to do is cook the pasta until al dente (not too soft), then drain it and rinse with cold water. You have two choices for the next step.
Put individual servings of the pasta into your favorite type of small containers or individual small plastic bags and pop them into the freezer.
For long-stranded pasta like spaghetti, create nests of noodles on a cookie tray lined with parchment paper or in muffin molds and put the pan into the freezer. When they are solid, put the nests in a freezer bag (they can go into the same bag and will stay separated). For muffin tins, let the pan sit out for about a minute, and the frozen nests will come loose. Each nest in a standard muffin tin yields 1 ounce (when dry) pasta.
How do you thaw frozen pasta? You have a few choices.
Stir the frozen pasta into warmed-up sauce and gently stir it until the pasta is thaw and warmed.
Put the frozen pasta serving into a microwavable bowl with about a Tablespoon of water. Partially cover the bowl and microwave, stopping once to stir the pasta, until it’s hot and ready to serve. This takes about 1 minute + 45 seconds in my relatively weak microwave, so start with 1 minute and go up from there as needed.
Can you boil frozen pasta? Add the pasta to boiling water and boil it for about 30 seconds, just until it’s hot. You don’t want to overcook it.
If you have time, just let the pasta sit out on your counter for a couple of hours. It will thaw naturally.